Finally, after three years of searching, I find a 20 round magazine for my MP-28/II submachine gun. These guns are incredibly rare in Canada which makes the magazines even harder to track down. I looked all over, including in the Balkans before finally finding one in a town 60km from me, go figure. The trade in a carpark felt remarkably like a drug deal, but there you go. This one is marked for the manufacturer, Haenel, no WaA’s so definitely prewar, likely pre-Nazi.

I understand, from my friend Andrew, that importing is a slippery slope. If so, I just fell down it. I have a Japanese Nambu Type-14 pistol coming from the States and while I wait I have been gathering the bits and pieces to put together a full kit.

In this case we have two magazines made by the Toriimatsu arsenal. I also found 44 rounds of wartime ammo, no headstamp which I am told is correct.

I was over the other side of Ontario on the weekend picking out of a guys retirement plan when I saw this magazine. It’s unmarked but clearly WW2 vintage, it has the painted zinc button on the base. It was super cheap and since you can never have enough magazines, well here we are.

The MP28/II that I have is missing its magazine and until I find one, well the Sten magazine fits just fine as the mag wells are identical. I had another one in the gun but it was a parkerized version and just too tidy considering how tired the MP was. Here was a cheap buy from the weekend, a tired KC marked (Kelvinator of Canada) example.

This is the holster that I just sourced for my 1944 Walther P38 pictured below. By 1944 they had pretty much stopped making hard shell holsters (they do exist). Instead they supplied the pistol with a breakaway style holster as here. Folks call them a soft shell holster but that is incorrect.

This example is stamped bla 1944 and has the waffenamt WaA159. BLA is the code for the manufacturer E.G.Leuner GMBH in Bautzen. Interestingly the holster is also personalised to the U.S. Army soldier who captured it (or won it in a card game). Inside the flap is the name Henry J. Lavrich and his ASN 33688587. A quick googling reveals that Henry came from Pennsylvania, enlisted in 1943 and served in the 2nd Armoured Division in Europe. He passed away in 2011. An additional modification on this example is the cutting away of the upper, underneath the flap. This is common in these holsters and I expect it was an act by the user to make the holster easier to draw from.

The holster also contains a e/359 stamped magazine which is the correct magazine for this pistol.

A fairly common find, a 32 round stick magazine for the Sten machine pistol. I don’t collect British weapons however I bought the MP28/II below a little while back and the MP came without a magazine. The MP28 mags are hard to track down so in the meantime I will use this mag for display.

The Sten was designed to take a common magazine with the Lanchester SMG. And since the Lanchester was a direct copy of the MP28/II by default, these Sten mags will fit the MP28. Of course the MP28 ones were 20 round but I don’t want to go chopping this down until I give up on finding an original MP28 Mag.

This magazine is marked K.C. This represents the manufacturer, Kelvinator Canada. This makes sense since I found it in Canada.